Documentary: Jon Snow Humiliated Israeli After Visiting Gaza

By Alistair Reign, February 5, 2016. First appeared in PGS: Paolog (03/11/2014).

Britain’s leading news anchor Jon Snow, dealt a massive blow to the Israeli military by smuggling Palestinian art out of Gaza and putting it on show in London back in 2014.

Majdal Nateel, 28, a Palestinian artist, in her studio in Gaza. (Photo: Palestine.com)

According to The Independent: He interviewed artist Majdal Nateel earlier this month and volunteered to take 399 of her paintings out of Gaza in his suitcase.

They will form part of a London show in P21 Gallery called Gaza on Gaza, featuring work by Palestinians based in the region responding to last year’s conflict.

“We were looking someone to carry it out and were worried that if we used a courier the Israelis would stop it,” said screenwriter Line Langebek, one of the show’s organisers.

“Jon, who was out there, spontaneously offered to carry it. It’s fantastic to see them up on the wall in London now.”

YouTube July 16, 2014: Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow destroys the Prime Minister of Israel’s Chief Spokesperson, Mark Regev, live on air on British television; questioning Israeli military attacks on Al-Wafa hospital and an attack which killed three young boys playing ball on a Gaza beach while Regev continues to claim “the Israeli military does not target civilians.”

He is a household name in the UK, having been honored with an Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Queen Elizabeth II – which he declined on the principle that a working journalist should not be honored for simply doing their job.

He has also been granted a fellowship by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA).

But when Jon Snow arrived in Gaza last Summer to report on Operation Protective Edge, he was moved like never before.

He remonstrated with Israeli spokesman Mark Regev live on-air, horrified by the 51-day attack in which Israel devastated civilian homes, schools, hospitals and even the power plant.

After seeing the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground himself, he was visibly shaken. He wrote at the time:

“I feel guilty in leaving, and for the first time in my reporting life, scarred, deeply scarred by what I have seen, some of it too terrible to put on the screen.

“Leaving Israel and beleaguered Gaza far below me, I lay back in my BA seat headed for London. I donned my headphones and listened to Bach’s heavenly violin concerto in E major, and wept, as I rarely have as an adult.”

On his return, he took the courageous decision to release a video plea to the nation to support the people of Gaza; an unprecedented step by a leading mainstream journalist in any western nation.

He was fully supported by Channel 4 News, despite mass protest by Zionist groups in the UK and beyond.

Channel 4 anchor Jon Snow is the UK’s Walter Cronkite. He is an esteemed, veteran journalist with 40 years in the field. He served as Washington Correspondent for ITN in the 80’s, and has led Channel 4’s prime news hour since 1989. He has won several awards (Royal Television Awards – Best Male Presenter/TV Journalist of the Year) for his front line coverage of El Salvador, Uganda, El Salvador, Haiti, Afghanistan and Iraq. [01]